“Oh, Mrs. Mason is not that sort of person, no. She believes in kindness and patience above all.”

With that, Mary climbed into my lap, and Caroline looped her arms about my neck. I told them stories inspired by our life together, about learning not to stomp on snails, who are God’s creatures, too, or kill a spider, who might be the only friend a prisoner has, how the prettiest girl visits a poor family and takes money from her purse and the scarf around her neck to give to them, as Caroline had. I never mentioned Margaret’s name. But we all knew, and were soothed by remembering what we had learned together. I felt the warmth of motherhood for the first time in my life.

Being forbidden to see each other was awful for me and, I knew, the worst part of Margaret’s imprisonment. I also knew that she visited my room while I was with her sisters for our nighttime storytelling. Sometimes things on my desk had been moved, or there would be a little gift of a stone or a seashell, maybe a note under my pillow. She’d sign her own name to it, in clear, strong letters.

In the final week it seemed that Lady K was softening. She invited me to the drawing room two or three times, tried hard to be civil and temperate, even invited me to another concert. I think she was surprised Margaret hadn’t buckled, hadn’t come to her begging for forgiveness. I wondered if some part of her even missed her daughter. Perhaps she saw me as at least a tenuous connection to her, even as she asked for reassurance that I had stayed true to my word.

“I have not gone to her, not set eyes on her, as I promised. But perhaps you would go to her.”

“I will not.”

“Do you not miss her?”

“Miss her disobedience? Her disregard? Her unkindness toward me?”

“Margaret—”

“Do not speak her name to me, or to anyone. That, too, you have promised.”

“Your daughter is more than those things, just as you might be more than she assumes of you. If only you’d show her. That is how children learn, by seeing. By feeling. You try to govern with a rod, when she responds best to the simple touch of a loving hand.”

“I am resolved,” she said, looking away from me. We spoke of it no more.